Mr. Seamus Coffey:

We wanted the rainy day fund to do a bit more. It looks like a very passive design. Once the public finances are back in balance in structural terms, a contribution of €500 million per annum will be made over three years. It is not offering the counter-cyclical benefits that a rainy day fund could provide. We are trying to set money aside in good times to have resources available when the rainy day comes. A fund based on a fixed contribution over a short period that does not come to a large sum of money does not appear to offer the counter-cyclical benefits that a more actively designed model could.

We recognise there are difficulties in setting it up. If it could be easily achieved, one could imagine there would be templates around the world of which we could avail. While it may be theoretically attractive to have this counter-cyclical element in place, given the constraints of the fiscal rules that are already there, it is easy to save money in good times but how can we ensure we can access and spend it when we actually want it? There are difficulties to overcome. The proposal could have merits but we would like to see it go a bit further and be more active.